2. Why Not Speed Up Your Reading?

In the information era, those who have quickest access to information often remain unbeatable. Reading is the major means by which we obtain information and improving reading speed is probably one of the best skills we can acquire at college. Read this essay and you will learn of ways to increase your reading speed.

For many people today, reading is no longer relaxation. To keep up with their work they must read letters, reports, trade publications, interoffice communications: a never-ending flood of words. In getting a job or advancing in one, the ability to read and comprehend quickly can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet the unfortunate fact is that most of us are poor readers.

A few months ago a man who had been promoted to a top management job came to see Dr. Emmett A. Betts, director of Temple University's Reading Clinic. The first morning on his new job he had found a huge pile of mail on his desk. He realized it would take him most of the day just to read the letters; moreover, a similar pile would confront him every morning.

A reading test showed that the executive was reading only about 160 words a minute. He was an engineer who had spent years plowing through difficult technical material. He had been forced to go slowly to get the meaning. Soon he began reading everything, even light fiction, at the same turtle's pace. Dr. Betts diagnosed the executive's reading problem as a common one—inability to "shift gears". If the subject matter were difficult, careful reading was justified; when it was easy, he should have zipped through it.

First, Dr. Betts forced the executive to read exceptionally fast some first- and second-grade material. Then he gave him increasingly difficult texts. Soon the former engineer was reading on his job at about 900 words a minute—and his problem was over.

Bad readers trudge home with briefcases bulging with material that should have been read on the job. Recently the vice-president of a large company conferred with Paul D. Leedy, adult adviser at New York University's Reading Institute. Nights and weekends, he said, he had to catch up on reading he should have done at the office, leaving little time to devote to his family.

Leedy found that the executive was a word-by-word reader. He gave him special assignments to help him grasp whole phrases instead of individual words, and also gave him assignments on a reading accelerator. This moves a curtain down a page at a predetermined rate of speed, forcing the student to read faster to keep ahead of it. At first the executive felt he was reading only superficially. But as his speed picked up, he found he was getting more out of his reading. Soon he was reading nearly 1 200 words a minute, compared to 225 when he started.

An engineer reported graphic evidence that faster reading improves concentration. He told of working with a reading accelerator in a room outside which children were playing noisily. At first he couldn't keep up with the pace set by the accelerator because of the clatter. As an experiment he set the device to scan the pages even faster. He soon found that he was concentrating so hard on keeping up with the machine that he was no longer aware of the noise.

Most reading faults can be traced to early school training. According to Dr. Betts, two persons out of five in school were forced to read material too difficult for them to understand at the time, a frustrating experience which left them with bad reading habits.

Fortunately, almost anyone can learn to read faster and with more comprehension. Age makes little difference. According to a recent study of 138 students at The Reading Laboratory, Inc., all age groups showed a marked increase in reading rate after training—from 93 percent for the 50-90 age group to 142 percent for the 20-29. Dr. Mila Banton Smith, director of New York University's Reading Institute, says that the average adult student, in 28 training hours, nearly triples his reading speed and boosts his comprehension by about 30 percent.

The best way to improve your reading, of course, is to enroll in a reading clinic. If there's no clinic handy or you cannot afford special training, most experts agree you can improve your reading ability yourself—provided you have no eye trouble. (If reading tires you easily or makes your eyes or head ache, you should consult a doctor.)

Here are some suggestions on how to train yourself:

If you are a lip reader, mouthing each word so you are slowed down to a snail's pace, place a finger on your lips and hold them firmly until the habit has been broken.

If your head swings as your eyes move along a line, lock your head between your hands as your read.

To break yourself of the habit of following print with your finger, grip the sides of what you are reading firmly with both hands.

Read in a quiet spot, as free from distractions as possible. But don't daydream; force yourself to concentrate on what you're reading.

If you stumble over unfamiliar words, try to guess the meaning from the context, then check the meaning in a dictionary later.

Make your eyes literally leap, over lines of print and try to grasp the meaning of whole phrases at a time.

Race an alarm clock. Estimate the number of words in an article or book chapter and set a time limit on how long you should take to read it. Set the alarm for that period of time. See if you can finish before the alarm goes off. Gradually shorten your target time.

After reading a section as fast as you can, pause and summarize in your mind the author's main points. Check yourself by reviewing the section.

Don't reread. Pretend the words disappear as your eyes pass over them. You'll probably be surprised to find that you didn't miss anything important.

Try glancing only at nouns and verbs in sentences to see how much you can get out of reading this way. Underlining these key words may help you get started, but stop underlining as soon as you catch on to the technique.

Draw a line down the center of a newspaper column. Center your vision on the line and try to grasp the meaning of the words on each side as you move down the page.

The secret of success is constant practice. The pay-off will be worth the effort.

From The Reader's Digest, January, 1955.